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Saturday, January 14, 2012

Day Three: The Reds All-Region Team

Today marks day three of our series highlighting current MLBers who hail from hometowns located in (or near) Reds country. As we continue our quest to assemble the best 25-man roster possible, we now turn out attention toward the the guys who roam the vast, green pasture known as the outfield.

In case you missed the first two days of the series, here is some info to help better detail what we're trying to accomplish here:

The main goal in making this squad is to only choose players who come from within the geographical reach of Cincinnati, but without crossing too much into the regions of other MLB franchises (sincere apologies to the Indians, Cardinals, Pirates, Orioles, or Braves if I did).
The following is the general criteria I used when assembling the roster:
**The player(s) must currently be active in the MLB ranks
**The player(s) must have either been born, raised, attended high school or attended a university in any of the following states: Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia, or Tennessee.
**The player(s) must demonstrate excellence at their respective position
**The player(s)' age and potential were also taken into consideration

So, without further ado here is what the (somewhat) homegrown Reds outfield would look like:

While this would certainly be an outstanding outfield group by any measure, it lacks boasting that elite superstar -- at least right now. With that said, Upton could very well emerge as a superstar among the league within the next couple years, while the likes of Hart, Swisher and Cuddyer all represent All-Star caliber players themselves. Collectively, they would likely rank among the top three outfields in MLB.